Decline of the English Murder; a King is overthrown by a mob

Discipline wanes. The relevancy criteria relax. Nothing to do with Abbotsford, except that there are lots of bike paths in Abbotsford and bike path snipers might strike anywhere there’s bike paths. The source of Melinda Zygarlicki’s was it a bird? was it a tennis ball? or was it .22 rifle? wound has turned himself in, saying he accidentally discharged his weapon. Weird, but reassuring.

Meanwhile, a Magistrate has ordered one of the two alleged hoodlums who were charged with the murder of the thief of the yellow racer, an Abbotsford lad, to stand trial in the Supreme Court on 8 August 2006, while dismissing the charge against the other, his half-brother. Ever since I read George Orwell’s “Decline of the English Murder” at an age when I found that, and “A Nice Cup of Tea“, more engaging than the leftist politics of the 1930s in England, I have enjoyed the odd Sunday paper article about a good murder. I want a nice Sunday paper article on the yellow racer murder.

And as the beautifully written Tariq Ali pointed out today in a concise and engaging must-read article, isn’t it wonderful to hear the good old fashioned news from Nepal, that desperately poor theatre of civil war waged by Maoists against — oh irony! — the Chinese-assisted King (pictured) who never expected to have to assume the throne (remember the “murder suicide” by the King’s nephew, the right handed crown prince who died from a bullet wound to his left temple after popping off most of the royal family?)? A general strike has overcome a shoot to kill protesters on sight edict and forced representative democracy onto the hilltop nation.

All this I find satisfying, wholesome; a counterpoint to the so-called war on terror. Mind you with 11,000 dead in the civil war, that’s almost a third of the Iraqis dead in this latest war, and it’s not getting a third of the coverage.